Riding and running was always fun, always done in the company of mates, a near-perfect base for future triathlon excellence achieved almost by happy accident.
There was also always a certain attitude, an unmistakeable determination.
When Alistair was a child watching sport on television at his parents’ house in Horsforth, something set him apart from most other British kids: he always wanted the favourite to win.
Maybe after these astonishing Olympics the national love of the underdog will have disappeared, so dominant have so many British athletes been.
Brownlee, even after a year horribly disrupted by a serious Achilles injury, was still most people’s pre-race tip for gold. Like his childhood heroes, he delivered.
Even among Britain’s myriad startling performances here, however, this was something new: two brothers, two house-mates, both atop the podium.
Alistair’s first memory of Jonny is being told, as he played with his toy cars in the garden, that he had a brother. As soon as the new arrival was old enough he started pushing him round the house in a little trolley.
